Wild Elk Productions presented The Tower at The Old Net Loft, Brighton Fishing Museum, from May 9th to 12th and May 16th to 19th. It was shortlisted for the Farnham Maltings Emerging Company Award at Brighton Fringe 2024.
Will Toni, a young woman born into a world devastated by climate emergency, find a way to survive, or will the elements and human nature be her downfall?
In the not-too-distant future, climate emergency causes catastrophic floods. Leaving the underprivileged high and dry in dilapidated flats. Who or what will Toni find on her epic journey in the flooded world beyond their tower?
The Tower explores how extreme weather will affect us. It plays with themes of love, legacy, and family, imagining how we might tell stories if the power goes. It’s a dark tale infused with humour, music and poetry that will pull you in and set you to sail on an ocean in a possible future of our own making.
Written by Emma Kelly, an award-nominated bursary-winning dramatist. Her show 2145 was voted in the top 3 out of 880 shows for Brighton Fringe Audience Choice 2023. Emma’s work is comic, dark and provocative, she experiments with Sci-Fi, horror, historical and political theatre. Emma has been commissioned in the UK and internationally, collaborating as a writer with companies such as Close Encounters, Circulate, Unzipped Theatre, Rising Tides and Slackline Productions, as well as on immersive projects in Brighton, including What if Walls Could Speak, a theatrical promenade in a Regency Town House. Emma founded Wild Elk Productions in 2023.
Directed by Debbie Fitzgerald, a teacher/director based in Brighton. She started out working with Studio 3 Arts, a leading participatory arts organisation in East London. She was the director of the Angels Theatre Company. Productions include Angels (Tom Allen Centre and Touring) Unloaded (Tristan Bates), The Footballers Wife (Hen and Chickens), Assistant Director Blueprint Theatre Company, Legacy (Rich Mix Theatre) Director Town House Voices Company, If Walls Could Speak (The Regency Town House)
Choreography by Charlie Hendren, a dancer/actor/musician and movement director. Since training at London Contemporary Dance School, graduating in 2012, he has worked with a variety of dance and physical theatre companies both nationally and internationally, such as Peut-être Theatre, Maiden Voyage Dance, Mechanimal and with many festivals and dance organisations such as The Royal Opera House. His work extends to community, site-specific, and outreach projects, and he has worked frequently in hospital and care environments such as Great Ormond Street Hospital.
Staring…
Isabella McCarthy Sommerville: an award-winning actress and voiceover artist from Brighton. Isabella recently returned from New York, where she made her Off-Broadway debut at Soho Playhouse after being awarded the International Fringe Encore Series Award for her performance of Something Underground’s one-woman show Betsy: Wisdom of a Brighton Whore. Other recent credits include Narrator in The Landing Light Live, Lady of the House in The Mirror, Hilda in the UK Tour of A Good Jew and Anna in Anna Christie (BHAC winner – Best Actress). Isabella is delighted to be playing Toni in The Tower and telling this important story. When she isn’t treading the boards, Isabella can be found at the helm of Rising Phoenix – a Sussex-based Arts Collective she founded in 2022.
Lorraine Yu: a versatile Brighton-based actor with a dynamic movement practice in capoeira and a hunger for physical theatre. She likes blurring the lines between movement and dance. Lorraine has been exploring life outside of Hong Kong since 2020 and is eager to experiment with different art forms. She has been performing in BATSU! London at the Underbelly Boulevard since late 2023. Her recent works include The Writer’s Mark, directed by Natasha Higdon, Dark Bites (Savage Heart), BUBBLING (BodiesforRent Theatre), THE BOX WE TICK (LegalAliens), and THE HAPPY POOR GUYS (Théâtre de la Feuille). She is currently in rehearsals for That Witch Helen – a feminist retelling of the Trojan War – for Brighton Fringe.
Sarah Widdas: a graduate of ACT drama school, Brighton. Sarah has performed professionally, on stage and screen, throughout Sussex, London and beyond. Sarah is thrilled to work with such a talented, dedicated team and looks forward to bringing this beautiful new play to life. Sarah is currently represented by Smile Casting Talent Agency.
Theatre Technician Fraser Smith: Fraser is a pro at running shows in non-theatre spaces. Coming back from a couple of years at sea, Fraser jumped straight into the role of our theatre technician, making sure technical needs were met. Happy to work with anyone and thoroughly enjoys what he does.
Projection Artist A/B Smith, aka Boblete: a music producer, hacker, coder, educator, data scientist, VJ, DJ and immersive experience artist operating in a space that weaves spatial sound, technology, politics and electronic club culture into art. With a background in computer science and education, his current work investigates the politics of AI and the possibilities of sound as a catalyst for revelation. He has released music under various guises, from the found-sound audio collage contained in the recording of ‘The Average Man’ to the underground club sounds released on various imprints between the late 90s to the present. His previous artistic output includes an impossible musical score for The Imagination released on Matthew Herbert’s Accidental editions, to an interactive ‘Sonic Pong’ installation on the massive 4DSound system at Muziekgebouw aan het IJ, during the ADE Festival in Amsterdam.
Reel created by Roxy Van Der Post (Myosotis Film & Photography)
The song at the start of the play includes these lyrics:
A maré a maré me leva ao céu x2
The tide,the tide,take me to the sky x2
A jangada me leva
pra outro lugar
eu não sei onde eu vou
nas ondas do mar
The raft takes me
to another place
I don’t know where I’ll go
in the waves of the sea
The Tower is for people who wonder what’s under the sea, those who like a good thriller with family at the heart of it, and people who want to have hope for the future and explore climate stories.
